My hands fist by my sides.
“If I go…will you let her see me?” Hartley speaks so quietly, it’s hard for me to hear.
“If you get on the plane, you can spend time with her from here to the airport.”
What a shithead. The airport’s thirty minutes away.
“I…I’ll think about it.”
No, I want to yell. Don’t think about it. Fight him.
“I’ll pick you up at ten. Dylan and I will accompany you to the airport, where we will smile and wave while you go through security.”
“What if I don’t come with you?”
“I’ll be driving to the airport regardless,” Mr. Wright says in a clipped tone. “Someone will be getting on a plane tonight. It will either be you or your sister.” He pauses. “I trust you’ll make the right decision.”
Chapter 28
My plan is to wait ten minutes before knocking on Hartley’s door. I want to give her time to recover from her father’s visit and his brutal ultimatum. But only two minutes pass before her door swings open and Hartley stumbles outside.
If I wasn’t parked in front of the two-story house, Hartley might’ve walked into the middle of the street. Instead, she nearly bangs her nose against the side of my pickup.
“You look like you either drank too much or just got run over by a truck.” I reach out a steadying hand.
Surprisingly, she takes it. “Truck. Definitely run over by a truck.”
“Let’s go for a ride.” I don’t give her time to answer. In a few moves, I have her inside the cab and buckled up.
“Any special requests?” I ask once I’m in the driver’s seat.
“I don’t care. Just away from here.” Looking defeated, she rests her head against the window and closes her eyes.
“No problem.” I play it easy. Like my own insides aren’t tied up in knots. I hate this. I hate feeling like this. I hate seeing her like this.
I don’t ask her any questions and she doesn’t volunteer anything, so the entire drive is spent in total silence. Funny how the quiet can be deafening. What’d she say before? In the quiet, you can hear the heart beat? You can also hear it break. The air in the cab of my truck grows thick and heavy.
We end up at an old marina not far from the pier. I turn into the gravel lot and park the truck. When I glance over, I realize that Hartley’s crying. They are noiseless tears. Just endless drops streaming down her face. I swear when they land it’s loud as a clap of thunder.
It’s why I keep the engine running. I need something to mask those tears. She sits beside me, staring out the window. I wonder if she can even see through the veil of tears.
I try to lighten the mood. “Dad said that this used to be the hottest place in town back in the seventies. I told him I didn’t realize they had boats in the medieval days.”
She cracks a tiny smile.
“Come on, let’s walk by the water,” I suggest.
I help her out of the truck. The old marina is rundown. The cedar plank siding is washed gray by the sand and the salt of the ocean. There are only a couple of docks still above water. The rest are sunken or have broken off.
It’s an overcast morning to match our mood. Hartley looks stricken. I’m sick to my stomach. We’re like two survivors wandering around in a daze after an explosion. But hey, at least we’re together, right?
I take her hand. The moment I do, she stares at our interlaced fingers. Suspicious. “Why aren’t you at school?”
“Because I was worried about you.” Because I want you to forgive me.
As always, Hartley calls me on my bullshit. “Worried that I was mad at you, you mean.”
I swallow.
Her sharp gaze continues to pierce into me. “You were outside my house. Did you see my dad?”
“Yeah,” I admit.
“Did you hear what he said to me?”
I consider lying, but then decide against it. “Yeah.” I take her arm and we make our way close to the water. There’s no railing, just a rocky slope about six feet wide that leads to the water’s edge. “You’re not getting on that plane, though. Right?”
“I…don’t know.”
I tamp down a jolt of panic. “Damn, Hartley. What the hell happened with you guys? Why does he ha—” I stop before the word hate pops out. I don’t think she’d appreciate me saying her father hates her. “Why is he so pissed at you?”
Her gaze stays fixed on the pebble-covered bank. “It’s a long story.”
I hold out my arms and gesture to the open air. “We’ve got nothing but time.”
She stares in silence for a long time. I want to fidget, kick some rocks, bellow at the ocean. Nah, what I really want to do is drive over to Hartley’s house and kick her dad and bellow in his face. I do neither, and my patience is finally rewarded.
“Four years ago—I guess maybe it’s almost five now—I was having trouble sleeping one night, so I went downstairs to get a glass of water. My dad was in the living room, talking to some woman. They were quiet, but she sounded mad and she was crying in between sentences. I think that’s why I didn’t interrupt or let him know I was there.”
“What were they talking about?”
“He was telling her he could take care of the problem but that it would cost her. The woman said she’d pay whatever he asked as long as he helped her son.”
I frown. “What did he say to that?”
“I don’t know. I snuck back upstairs because I didn’t want him to know I was eavesdropping. He’s got a temper, so we all try not to make him angry if we can help it.” She scowls. “Anyway, two days later I heard him arguing on the phone with his boss that he’d used ‘prosecutorial discretion’—whatever the hell that is—in dismissing the charges against the Roquet kid.”
“Who’s the Roquet kid?”
“Do you know Drew Roquet?”
“No.”
“He’s older than us. He was nineteen at the time and got busted for heroin possession. It was his third offense, and they were going to charge him with trafficking because of the amount he had on him. That’s five to twenty-three years in prison.” Hartley’s tone fills with disgust. “But what do you know—the heroin he had on him was lost in the evidence room, so my dad dismissed the charges.”
“I don’t like where this is going.”
“I didn’t either, but I tried to forget about it. At the time, I didn’t think my dad would do anything wrong. He was a DA and he hated drug offenders. Called them lowlifes who didn’t contribute to society, and he said drugs were the reason for everything wrong in this country. Murders, domestic abuse, theft. All of it could be traced back to drugs, according to him.”
“Okay. So you let it go.”
“Yes, and everything seemed fine, but…it bugged me. So I started nosing around where I shouldn’t. I went on his computer one time. He always uses the same password, but he changes the last number every month or so, so it was pretty easy to guess. And when I was on there, I found this anonymous account where people would email him requesting a special favor and they’d say who referred them. There weren’t any details and no responses other than ‘Let’s meet.’”